Minisplit on generator
1869farmhouse
| Posted in General Questions on
We’ve been having more frequent and longer power outages than ever, and while I’d love to have a solar system in place, that’s not in the cards at the moment.
I have 3 Mitsubishi Mini Split systems in my home. A large multi-split and two smaller single zone systems. I’d love to hook up my generator to one of the single zone units to have heat and A/C at all times now that I have a baby to worry about.
Does anyone have experience with this? I’m wondering if my portable generator might not make “clean” enough power and would end up frying the circuitry in my Mitsubishi. Any way to mitigate this?
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Replies
Inverter mini-splits are highly resistant to small variations in voltage, frequency and waveform. They are often more sensitive to large voltage spikes, but that isn't likely to occur with a generator. I wouldn't worry.
You’ll probably be ok, just make sure your generator can handle it. Ignore “surge ratings” as they’re just marketing numbers. Commercially, generators are rated for standby and prime, there is no concept of a “surge” rating. As long as your minisplits maximum power consumption is less than the rated continuous output of your generator I’d expect it to work ok.
I would monitor things on your first run just to be safe. What you don’t want to have is an oscillation with the minisplit cycling on and off and the generator surging with a “vrrrroooom, vrrrrooom, vrrrooom” sound. The oscillation has to do with the mechanical governor interacting with a cyclic load and that can cause problems.
Bill